Horseback ridding 12/13/09

Today i rode Rebel. We did a lot of canter work, and worked mostly on keeping him straight. For not cantering in months, I feel as though everything went really well. Rebel was extermly straight, and we achieved one of the best canters Ive had on him. He was very upright, and soft in the bit, something that took him a long time to achieve. The ride started off kind of difficult however. When I first got on rebel through his head in the air and refused to put it down, he also let out once nice buck. However, after some work Rebel finally started to get back to working as he should.

Art Portfolio 12/8

Again I cropped the picture. I really do like this sketch, there is just a few things I want to change about it. Her lips don't really match with the rest of her face, they just looked as if they were placed there. Also her left cheek bone is a bit to low and sticking out. However the shading on her face is something I am very proud of. My sketches are getting more and more realistic with each passing week. My instructor was very happy with this piece, and when we sat down reviewing the images at the end she said that this one was a break through image for me, since i normally end up drawing things to small, and because of the extreme shading i put into it. This sketch will also make it in to my portfolio. the shading on the rest of the body, as you can start to see on her chest, looks very life like, and I am extremely proud of it.

Sturgeon 12/6

Today I had my first meeting with Mrs. Peterson about how this was going to be accomplished. She brought in a bunch of different fabrics for me to start experimenting with. We also talked about how long we thought this was going to take, and the actual shape the fish would take. I came home and did some research on what the fish actually looks like. I put together this college as an inspiration of how the Sturgeon will look. I found some sketched images to hopefully find a more cartoonist and cuter look for the fish.

Miracle Party 12/6

The status of this activity could not be more frustrating. After being told I was in charge of food by Jane (my girl scout troop leader) I gathered some of my friends to help and found a life guard, and a back up life guard for the weekend. I sent Kathleen a e-mail about 2 weeks ago stating what I had done and asking what else I should. She then replied to me saying she didn't know that I was helping out in this event and said she had already had people and that she would get back to me later in the week to tell me how she could fit me in and what else she would need. I was very frustrated by this and called Jane. Jane told me that she had never talked to Kathleen and told me it was my responsibility to have e-mailed Kathleen earlier and say I was helping. From what I was told before I was under the impression that this was the assigned job that I was given, and that everything was running smoothly. Plus I had also e-mailed Kathleen earlier in the year and she had still not responded to the e-mail. I then talked to Jane Friday night, I had still not received another e-mail from Kathleen like she had stated would, and Jane told me that we would help with the breakfast on Saturday morning. About an hour later she called saying we didn't need to go. I did not go and last night I was talking to Missy, and she told me that she went, and that Jane had called me saying again saying to go. I checked my phone and there was no missed calls or no new voicemail. I am extremely frustrated with this. Jane told me that we are going to finish this Gold Award by filming something, i'm going to talk to her within the week and see if it is even remotely possible.

Horseback Ridding 12/6

Today I finally got to ride since I have been sick. I was extremely happy I finally got to ride again. Since it has been so long since I have last ridden I could not ride for too long or do anything to complex because my ridding instructor would be weak and she did not want to make it to sore. I rode Parker and we just did a lot of trot work. We mostly focused on me sitting up straight, and focusing on my body posture since I hadn't ridden in awhile. It was amazing to see how out of shape not being able to be active for 6 weeks made me. I started breathing heavy extremely early into my lesson, and I was shocked at how much more effort I had to put into to doing things that I found used to be so much easier to do ridding. However I was still able to get Parker to stay round and be up, which is very hard for him.

Holiday Stroll

The Holiday Stroll went over extremely well, and it was a lot of fun. I was put in charge of decorating the cookies with the kids that came into the school. The theatre class and Mrs. Yalden had brought in frosting and cookies just for this table, the cookies that I brought in were on a desert table. Mrs Yalden made frosting for the cookie decorating and I added the food coloring to make the awesome frosting for the children to decorate with. The theme of the Holiday Stroll was that there was a Treasure Hunt for the children. They had to help Santa find his missing keys, which was hidden in the mouth of the seagull in one of the pictures above. The children walked all down main street finding out clues that led them to Sturgis were they had to find the extremely easy to find key. Once the key was found the children were given a ticket with a picture of a key on it and were told to go to Candy Corner to receive their prize.

On the table that I was out there was flyers advertising Sturgis. Since I am a student at Sturgis a large amount of the parents that came through asked me about what I thought about it. I honestly told them how much I loved it, and how it was one of the best choices I ever made. One thing that I found very interesting was that one lady I was talking to had read the article that has been recently released about how you have to be smart to get into Sturgis. I told her about how there are a lot of rumors about Sturgis, but how that was not true and how anyone could get in. She also asked me if there was a special needs program, since the article said there wasn't. I told her there was. She was extremely happy to hear all of this and thanked me for telling her the right information. I was really happy that I was able to set someone right about our school, and present it the positive light that it should be in.

Art Portfolio 12/1

This is only a piece of the drawing I did for this class, however since it is a figure drawing class, as stated before I cannot post the rest of the picture on my blog. This sketch however is my favorite out of everything if done in preparation for my art portfolio. I know that this one will defiantly be in the final portfolio that I send off to my colleges. On my last sketch I did not spend much time on the face and focused more on the shading and the light. So this time after sketching the initial outline and position of the body I spent the majority of my time sketching her face, and working on the minor details and shading. I'm really proud of how this came out. The rest of the body also had really detailed shading, and I am finally becoming a lot more exact in the proportions of the body. On the rest of the drawing, the feet were the only thing that wee out of proportion.

Art Portfolio 11/24

Today I went to my figure drawing class again, and in this class our model was nude so I cannot post the drawing that I did on my blog. Although the whole time i was sketching I found the situation extremely awkward and uncomfortable, i ended up creating one of the strongest images in my portfolio so far. It was done with charcoal and unlike the last figure drawing class i took i drew it straight from scratch, not erasing to capture the light. It is by far the most realistic drawing I have ever done. The shading on it is very detailed, and i worked extremely hard to emphasis where the light did and did not hit. A weakness in my drawings is that they have always been to light, and that I do not put a lot of black or extreme dark colors in it because i get nervous that I can not fix them afterwards. However in this drawing I focused a lot on the shadows and I have a huge range of dark to light in the drawing.

When the class is over we always spend a few moments critiquing each others artwork, and the art instructor says what she likes and what she thinks should be improved in each. As stressful as this part is it is very important to me because it is the only professional critic ill be able to get on my artwork, to let me know what is weak, and what is strong. When she was reviewing the artwork she said she was very impressed by mine and pointed out the face in particular. She though the shading on it was 'beautiful'.

When i showed the drawing to my parents, after they got over what it actually was, my dad was shocked that I was the one who drew it and had no idea that I could draw like that. This meant a lot to me, because my parents are not ones to give compliments just to be nice. They only say this when they really mean it. Plus my dad is not big into art and sometimes doesn't understand things with an artistic view. Also my parents are a huge influence on me, and the fact that they are supporting me through me trying to improve in my art skills as quickly as I can, so that I can get into the college I want.

Chili

Before this i had never made Chili before. It was definitely an interesting experiance.

Soccer 11/17

Today was the awards ceremony for the fall sports. It was an awesome event, and was great to be with the team one last time. It was an extremely bittersweet moment, since being a senior it was my last banquet. I did not win any awards but that didn't matter to me, I was happy for those members on my team who did. Its sad to see that the soccer season is officially over but it was defiantly a nice way to end the season, and I could see the enthusiasm in the team for next year. That was defiantly the best part, seeing the determination of the team to do better next year.

Miracle Party

Finally we came up with a solution on how to continue on with this project, we are going to hold another holiday weekend very similar to the one done last year. This year however I am in charge of the food for the weekend, I have already started to ask fellow students if they would be willing to help cook. Also I am helping Missy out with locating a life guard since I did so last year and know so many.

Artportfolio 11/14

Art Portfolio 11/11/09

Soccer 11/9/09

Like I said in my horseback ridding post I have mono and can not play in contact sports. When I first came down with mono I missed the last week of soccer. I was unable to go and watch any of the games because I was still to tired and too sick. It was very depressing not being able to be there for my team in out last week, and very sad to have to miss the end of my last year in soccer. I was able to go to the last practice and watch however. I went and picked up pizza and brought some for everyone. It was really great to be back with the team even though I could not play in the last practice with them.

Horseback Ridding 11/09/09

A little less than a week ago I got mono. Because of this I am not allowed to participate in any contact sport, because I am at the risk of my spleen rupturing. Even though Ridding would not typically qualify as a contact sport there is always the risk of me falling off, and because of that I am not allowed to ride for the next six weeks. I plan to stop by the barn very shortly and see if I can help out, or maybe just visit. This six weeks thing is extremely annoying and I am very upset about it, ridding is my life and passion and I do not like that I cant do it right now.

Art Portfolio 11/9/09

This is a drawing of an eye done in charcoal that I have yet to finish. I still have a huge amount of details to add to it and I am planning to try and finish it sometime this week. I really like how the pupil is coming out so far. I spent at least an hour working on the shading of that part of the eye to get it to look as realistic as possible. For some reason i'm pretty good at sketching eyes, so I wanted to try and attempt a very realistic charcoal piece for my portfolio since that seems to be one of my strengths. So far i'm extremely proud of this piece. However, I am neverous to work on the rest of it, in fears that i might mess it up and waste all of the time that I put into making the eye. Also since the rest is the harder part for me to do I'm afraid it wont come out as realistic as what I already have.

Art Portfolio 10/31/09

This is a direct drawing of a lamp in my house that I started to draw. However i'm thinking about turning it into a lamp. Direct drawings are something I am lacking in my portfolio and this is one that so far I am pretty proud of. I reallt like the shading on the base of the lamp and I am hoping that the quality remains the same throughout the drawing of it. It took about an hour to do all the shading, while passing out candy for halloween, and I hope to finish the rest soon.

Soccer October 7

Today we had a game against Cape Cod Academy. We went into this game

Destination Imagintation October 5

Today I had a brief meeting with people interested for DI for this year. Mr. Newcomb (the coordinator for the school) informed us that this year the school would not be paying for any of our funds and that we have to some how find ways to fundraise the money. This means about $50 a person. We have a lot of work to do for fundraising.

Soccer October 5

Today we had a game against New Testament. Which is defiantly an easier team to play. We new this going into the game and I think as a team this got to our heads. When we got to the field we were there for about a half hour before the other team showed. After all of that warming up and waiting the refs never showed. The coaches debated over what to do for a very long period of time. Overall my team was there for an hour before we played. Since we started our warm ups when we got there half of our team got bored and stopped warming up, instead of constantly moving around. The beginning half of the game was proof of this, we all did horrible as a team. To the point that our coach was in awe and confused. The other team made one goal that should have never have been able to get past our defense. However after the second half our team finally got their act together and we ended up wining 4-1. In the first half I did not do to amazing. However at the beginning of the second half my game improved greatly. Then the strength in my knee slowly started to decrease until it gave out. After that my performance was not my best.

Horseback October 4

Today I rode Rebel again. Since it had been raining the last few days the horses have been stuck inside, and Rebel had a lot of energy. Today we made huge progress in having his neck stay straight throughout the ride, which in turn lead to him achieving straightness throughout his whole body. We worked mainly on leg yielding, and trying even harder to keep his body straight while moving sideways. Now that Rebel has been taught the basic understanding of how dressage movements work I have been working very hard on perfecting the movements, and making him do them without fuss or confusion. My instructor said that today was the best lesson i've had on him, and it defiantly felt awesome to hear that.

Art Portfolio October 4

Here is the finished result. The picture doesn't really show the colors as much as I would like, the dress and mask is more neon orange. I'm very proud of this piece but still stressed out over little details at the same time. This took me a few hours today to finish. Its hard to see in the picture but the mask has grey and gold swirling details. The card background is one of my favorite parts. Originally I wanted to cut the cards up an make some type of swirl pattern. Then I decided that the background should be something repetitive so that the main focus would be on the girl.

Art Portfolio October 3

Today I spent the whole day sitting in my house, from when i woke up till when i went to bed creating an art piece. Last year my TOK class went to go see an art exhibit for Obey and since then I've been fascinated with the way he created his art. He uses lots of spray paint and his own created stencils to produce his art. Also he normally uses newspaper print or some type of pattern as the base. I did not want to use his technique exactly so I came up with the idea of using playing cards. I've always been inspired by masquerade masks and I wanted to somehow incorporate that into my artwork. By doing so I could focus more on the mask rather than the facial features, which are one of my weaknesses. I tried to give the piece a Renaissance feel, by making the dress like I did. I have not yet decided what color I am going to paint it however. I feel as though this is going to be one of the stronger pieces in my portfolio and I'm really looking forward to the outcome. This has been a huge challenge for me. Today I had to sketch out the girl and turn my sketch into the stencils that I would use for the spray painting. I have always felt that I am not strong at sketching which made it harder for me to have confidence in what I was doing. I am still unsure of how I want to do the background, but I do have a few basic ideas to get me started.

Soccer September 30

Today we were supposed to have a game against New Testament, however it was cancelled because one of the members of their team broke their leg in a game about 2 days ago. So today we are going to have practice again. For the last few days I have been sitting out of practice because of my knee. It still does not feel right and is still swollen, even though I have not been running lately. I am in the process of making a appointment with a physical therapist so i can see what is clinically wrong with it. Today I might practice just to see how i feel

Miracle Party September 24

Over the summer i worked every single day, some days I worked two jobs. It made it impossible to do anything with the camp over the summer. I came in contact with Kathleen and told her about my schedule, she told me to e-mail her when my schedule freed up. I kept in contact but it got to the point that it was starting to look extremely unlikely that anytime would free up before school started, which is exactly how it ended up. I recently sent her an e-mail telling her that because of my wonderfully rigorous school program I would not be able to attempt anything else untill later in the year. I have yet to get a response and now I have to figure out where to go from here with this activity.

Miracle Party June 1

There was not enought RVSPs for the event Sunshine Sunday to take place. I have been in constant e-mail with the other people in charge of this event on now this is some issues about where to go from here. In order to continue on with the gold award I have to stick to something that helps this organization. However everyone in my group has extremly conflicting scheduals so at the moment we are deciding if instead of keeping this a group project, that we should work indivdually. I persnally do not want to work individually since i do not know the camp well enough to make as large as a contrubition as my other partners could, and as i could too with thier help

Horseback ridding September 27

(<-Rebel)

For some reason my blogs got deleted, and i'm not really sure why. Over the summer I only rode about once a week because my work schedule was extremely crazy. I helped to train one of the school ponies named Rebel. He does not have any experience with dressage and I helped to try and teach him new dressage methods. I have also been ridding my friends horse who never comes to the barn, his name is Parker. Parker is a more advanced horse, tho not as advanced as Danny. Since he does not get ridden often he does not always behave wonderfully. Today I rode Parker and worked extremely hard on trying to get his canter to where a more experienced horse should be. His canter became extremely straight, which is very hard for Parker to do. It was a huge achievement and everyone at the barn was congratulating me for it. It was pretty awesome. One of my friends jokingly said i got the gold star for the day.

Soccer September 25

Today we had a game against South Shore Christian Academy. We lost the game 4-0, and overall the effort on our team was very poor. I wasn't playing my best and i couldn't figure out why, I was just off. I had been in the game the whole time until the beginning of the 2nd half when coach called me off the field because i was limping. My knee was extremely swollen and I had to ice it and sit out for the rest of the game.

Soccer September 24

Today I went to practice but my knee, which has given me problems in the past, was extremely sore and slightly swollen. I decided to sit out of practice, but help out and watch the best I could. We have a game tomorrow and I did not feel like pushing my knee and injuring so I would preform not to my usual standard in the game tomorrow. Tonight I am icing my knee and I went out and brought a new knee brace hoping that will fix the situation.

Art Portfolio

September 24-

This is the one of my dresses i have created for my art portfolio. It is made completely out of recycled materials and is something I am extremely proud of. This is a dress that I have decided will most defiantly go into my portfolio. For Parsons i have to complete a 'challenge' along with my portfolio. For the challenge I must take something in my everyday life and show it in three different perspectives. I'm thinking about doing some type of nature inspiration for that. Since this dress was clearly inspired by trees in nature i'm considering using it for the Parsons challenge, because I feel so strongly about it. This dress I made as more of a costume design then a fashion design. I decided if i were to do a costume out of recycled materials I would be able to take more creative licence with it and show more of my artistic skills, while showing I have an eye for fashion. It is hard to see from the pictures but the dress is detailed with spray paint designs and is all completely hand painted to add to the artistic element that I tried to add to it.

Soccer September 7

This year i re-joined the soccer team, since i did not play in my junior year. It started about two weeks ago and one of my main problems is the fact that i have not ran since sophmore year. This weekend was the first weekend since school started and i went for an 45 minute run to make sure i keep up with my exercise over the weekend. This way i wont lose any of the cardio i have build in the last week of soccer. I did alot of sprinting work, but had to walk a little bit. I plan on running once a weekend and making sure i walk less each time.

Horse BackRidding June 10

The lease on Danny is now offically over. As sad as I am about it, im happy because i now have more time to manage my life better. I am still taking lessons at my barn on school horses twice a week however. I still ride Danny sometimes, and I also ride a school horse named Rebel. Rebel is not as advanced as a horse as Danny was but I am helping to train him to become a better horse. I actually am able to get him to function extremly well, better than anyone else at my barn. His movements are crooked, and somehow cuz of the crookedness in my back we find a perfect straightness that is needed in dressage.

Miracle Party May 23

Today we met at Dunkin Dounts for an hour to discuss the event. The name of the event is Sunshine Sunday, and is basically a day of fun for the families. This event is mostly focused on getting word out about the camp to families that live on cape. The majority of the families that come to the summer camp do not live on cape and this is a great way to let people know about what the camp is doing. There is going to be a moonbounce, a cook out, crafts, tours of the camp, and other fun activities going on. The only problem is that we haven't gotten many RSVPs back yet and we aren't really sure if we are going to have enough people going to put on the event. If the event does not happen I am going to voulenteer my time at the camp over the summer.

Destination Imagination